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The Chamber's anti-gas-tax pitch

Sure enough, Sheffield Nelson and the Arkansas Municipal League reported enough signatures last week to clear the first hurdle for an act that will for the first time in history decently reimburse Arkansans and their descendants for the profiteering from vanishing natural gas resources.

Now, the sponsors will have to withstand a legal attack on the petitions by the gas companies and their surrogate, the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce, and pick up a few thousand more signatures for insurance. Then they, and the voters, will have to fight off a classic disinformation campaign of the kind that has become the national standard on big policy issues. The campaign against the national health-insurance law in 2010 is the template. If you've got enough money and moxie you can make people believe anything — that the law will destroy jobs, freedom and the American way of life and pile onerous taxes and debt on all of us and our descendants.

That is already the chamber's and gas industry's tack on Nelson's initiated act, which would impose a 7 percent tax on the value of gas produced for the market in Arkansas. The rate would be close to what other states in the region tax gas at the wellhead. Since 2009, Arkansas's rate averages a little over 1.5 percent. Other big gas-producing states levy taxes in different forms and at varying rates; Sarah Palin's Alaska collects a tax of 22.5 percent. The severance tax in Alaska raises more than 77 percent of the state government budget, so Alaskans are almost tax-free. In Texas, the severance tax accounts for 6 percent of the state budget, in Oklahoma 13 percent, in Louisiana 9 percent and New Mexico 19 percent.

What about the Arkansas budget? Severance taxes account for under one half of 1 percent.

Our leaders, including the State Chamber of Commerce, have always loved the sales tax to pay for everything. In fact, that's one reason they want to prevent a fair severance tax on natural gas. Most of the money from the tax would go to fix highways and bridges, city streets and county roads. The chamber and the gas industry want ordinary people, the middle class and the poor, to pay for interstate roads for the shippers and for the damage done to roads in gas exploration.

Here is what you will hear:

• The big companies will take drilling rigs out of Arkansas and it will cost tens of thousands of jobs. Not one rig will move — not because of the little severance tax anyway — and not one job will be lost. Have they moved out of Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Kansas, Alaska and elsewhere into Arkansas because of our low tax and their high taxes? Never happened.

• You'll pay higher taxes for your heating gas. Not true. The gas goes into interstate pipelines and is marketed nationally. Little of the shale gas stays in Arkansas.

But never mind. They'll have industry-financed studies showing all those horrors to be true.

Speaking of Sheffield Nelson, Arkansas State Chamber Of Commerce

The Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce is laying on a free spread for legislators under a big tent at chamber headquarters from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. today outside the chamber office at 1200 W. Capitol Avenue. /more/

Another media opp for opponents of medical marijuana serves as another important reminder of the need to VOTE NO ON ISSUE 3, the corporate welfare amendment. /more/

The Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce seems to have taken on depriving sick people of medical marijuana as its current passion — along with protecting the casino duopoly enjoyed by its members at Southland and Oaklawn Parks. /more/

As I mentioned, the Farm Bureau/Chamber of Commerce combine that has joined hands with Gov. Asa Hutchinson to beat medical marijuana proposals that would provide legal relief to sick people brought a controversial "expert" to town today. /more/

Advocates of the initiated act to legalize dispensation of marijuana for medical purposes at non-profit centers have fired back at Gov. Asa Hutchinson's press conference Monday to oppose both medical marijuana measures on the November ballot. /more/

Now three lawsuits are pending over two competing medical marijuana initiatives. /more/

The Southwest Times Records reports here on the lamentations of Arkansas business leaders and politicians about the new federal rule on the pay level at which employees must receive overtime pay. Some of the same people are hungry for government handouts for themselves. /more/

John Lyon of the Arkansas News Bureau highlights the emerging difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party on marijuana. This issue is simpler than it looks from where I sit. /more/

A rediscovered violin concerto brings an oft-forgotten composer into the limelight.

My colleagues John Ray and Jesse Bacon and I estimate, in the first analysis of its kind for the 2018 election season, that the president's waning popularity isn't limited to coastal cities and states. The erosion of his electoral coalition has spread to The Natural State, extending far beyond the college towns and urban centers that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. From El Dorado to Sherwood, Fayetteville to Hot Springs, the president's approval rating is waning.

Despite fierce protests from disabled people, the U.S. House voted today, mostly on party lines, to make it harder to sue businesses for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. Of course Arkansas congressmen were on the wrong side.

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We're sad to report that Doug Smith has decided to retire. Though he's been listed as an associate editor on our masthead for the last 22 years, he has in fact been the conscience of the Arkansas Times. He has written all but a handful of our unsigned editorials since we introduced an opinion page in 1992.

Last week, Attorney General Dustin McDaniel became the first elected statewide official to express support for same-sex marriage. His announcement came days before Circuit Judge Chris Piazza is expected to rule on a challenge to the state's constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Soon after, a federal challenge of the law is expected to move forward. McDaniel has pledged to "zealously" defend the Arkansas Constitution but said he wanted the public to know where he stood.

Remarking as we were on the dreariness of this year's election campaigns, we failed to pay sufficient tribute to the NRA, one of the most unsavory and, in its predictability, dullest of the biennial participants in the passing political parade.

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My colleagues John Ray and Jesse Bacon and I estimate, in the first analysis of its kind for the 2018 election season, that the president's waning popularity isn't limited to coastal cities and states. The erosion of his electoral coalition has spread to The Natural State, extending far beyond the college towns and urban centers that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. From El Dorado to Sherwood, Fayetteville to Hot Springs, the president's approval rating is waning.